1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate generally to the technical field of commerce automation and, in one exemplary embodiment, to methods and systems to authenticate and authorize user access to a system.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet and the World Wide Web (“Web”) have changed the landscape of information delivery and affected numerous faculties of life, including electronic commerce and entertainment. One area that has benefited from this technological development is the ability for individuals to buy and sell products over the Internet. The growing electronic commerce has encouraged many businesses to join hands in doing business and in sharing customers and their information. The overlapping businesses, partnerships in conducting business, referrals, mutual distribution of resources, and sharing of users and user information has created a network of applications, servers, and Websites which has created various technical challenges, complexities, and insecurities.
A number of technical challenges exist with respect to authorization and authentication of users and/or systems. For example, conventionally, when a user accesses the primary system via a secondary system, much of sensitive and personal user information, ranging from passwords to profiles, is directly transmitted between the primary and secondary systems. Such transmission of data is not only inherently insecure, but also it is cumbersome, at least, in that it requires a separate transmission for each of the secondary systems that the user accesses, even if it is to ultimately access the same primary system. Furthermore, this and other technological challenges also limit the performance of system network between primary and secondary systems, in general, and the ability of the user to access multiple systems, in particular.